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He began
to feel restless as the long hot days of summer faded into the cool
rains of autumn, though he didn’t know why. The feeling of needing
to do something important nagged at him from the time he woke til the
time he went to bed, and interrupted his sleep, sending him out to
wander the dark streets at all hours of the night. He watched the
lights and decorations go up, the people pass back and forth on
errands, sometimes in the rain, sometimes under clear skies, and more
and more often in the snow. The sensation of waiting for something
only grew stronger as the days shortened into winter, until he woke
with his head full of the gentle chiming of bells, and remembered.

He got out
of bed and went outside—barefoot, bare-chested, his skin raising
into goosebumps under the cold wind—and breathed in the scent of
cold, looking up at the snowflakes drifting down like frozen stars.
His breath steamed in front of his mouth, lit in multi-coloured
flashes by the neighbour’s Christmas lights. He thought of the
aurora borealis of his long-ago childhood and remembered how it
rippled and twisted across the sky in long ribbons, casting its
strange light down onto the deep snow and the white elk that moved
through it in stately splendour.